Qiyamah: The Day of Resurrection and the Signs of the Hour in Islam

In the year 632 of our era, before dying in the city of Medina, the Prophet Muhammad warned his followers that the Hour of Judgment, known as Yawm al-Qiyamah, would inevitably arrive when certain signs were fulfilled. This Islamic concept describes the absolute collapse of the physical laws of the universe, where the sun will be rolled up, the mountains will fly like carded wool, and the seas will burst into flames. All human beings who ever lived will be physically resurrected from their graves by the blowing of a trumpet to account for their deeds before God on a completely new Earth.

Islamic revelations divide the events that herald the end into minor and major signs. While the minor ones describe moral decay and social disorder, the major signs announce extraordinary events: the appearance of a one-eyed false messiah known as the Dajjal, the subsequent descent of Jesus (Isa) to defeat him, the invasion of the destructive hordes of Gog and Magog, and finally, the sun rising from the west, closing the gate of repentance for humanity.

The Major Signs of the End

The arrival of Qiyamah is a staged process that will unleash suddenly after a period of moral chaos. The first major event will be the appearance of the Dajjal, who will travel the world performing false miracles to lead believers astray. His tyranny will last forty days, one of which will be like a year, another like a month, another like a week, and the rest like normal days. The oppression of the Dajjal will end with the descent of Jesus at a white minaret in Damascus; with a lance in hand, Jesus will defeat the impostor and restore justice.

Subsequently, the walls containing the wild tribes of Gog and Magog will fall, and these hordes will consume all the water of the rivers and ravage the lands until a plague sent by God stops them. After a period of peace and abundance under the guidance of Jesus, a gentle wind will take the lives of all believers, leaving only the worst human beings on Earth. It will be then that the angel Israfil will blow the trumpet: the first blast will kill every living creature and collapse the cosmos; the second blast will resurrect humanity to appear before the scales of divine justice.

The Origin of the Quranic Warning

The descriptions of Qiyamah are detailed in the Quran, the holy book revealed to Muhammad in the Arabian Peninsula in the seventh century, and in the Hadiths, the written record of the sayings and actions of the prophet. These revelations directly challenged the pagan view of pre-Islamic Arabia, which believed that cyclical time destroyed things without a higher divine purpose. The Quran introduced the notion of a strict limit to the history of the world and the individual responsibility of each soul before its creator.

The holy text repeatedly warns that the Hour will come suddenly, so that a man will not have time to raise food to his mouth before the world collapses. Muslim scholars meticulously classified these traditions to construct a coherent chronology of the end times that has guided the community of believers for fourteen centuries.

The Impact on the Islamic World

The imminence of the Hour has decisively influenced the political history of the Islamic world. In times of great crisis, such as the Mongol invasions in the thirteenth century—which devastated the Caliphate of Baghdad—or the Crusades, many believers interpreted that the prophesied events were occurring before their eyes. The siege of Baghdad was seen by many chroniclers of the time as the irruption of Gog and Magog described in the scriptures.

Waiting for the Hour

In current Islamic theology, it is strictly forbidden to predict the exact year or day of the arrival of Qiyamah, as the Quran establishes that only God possesses that knowledge. Believers observe the fulfillment of the minor signs—such as the rise of skyscrapers built by former Bedouin shepherds or the increase in earthquakes—as constant reminders of the brevity of earthly life.

The prophecy of Qiyamah concludes with the crossing of the Sirat bridge over the abyss of eternal fire. Men and women will walk along this path, thinner than a hair and sharper than a sword, where the speed of their crossing will depend exclusively on the purity of their earthly deeds.